Bad Bunny’s new album, DTMF, is a love letter to Caribbean culture.
"Está abriendo muchos temas de conversaciones uniendo familia, generaciones, gente de otros países. personas de otros países que están reconectando con su propia cultura de su país, admirando la de nosotros y reconectando con la de ellos."
Bad Bunny talking of the impact of his new album - BAD BUNNY SE CONMUEVE CON DTmF, presiones, adicción al trabajar, actuar y su mejor música.
Caribbean music and influence often go overlooked, our history diminished and our languages mocked. Here Bad Bunny is putting all of it under the spotlight and is being celebrated for it.
As a lot of hispanic people feel moved by hearing their language in the center stage, Latine people by seeing their culture on display. Let’s not forget that THIS is also Caribbean culture.
I don’t listen to a lot of Bad Bunny, I’m familiar with some of his work but when I saw people sharing his new album on social media, I knew I had to listen to this one even if that meant blocking an entire morning. I knew by the album cover, I knew just by seeing those two plastic chairs in the middle of a banana field.
Every kid who grew up in the Caribbean or in the diaspora is familiar with those chairs, we all tried our best to balance our plates on our knees, we all saw the elders sitting on them, talking when they weren’t playing dominoes. Those chairs hold our stories and our memories.
So I did. I took part of my morning to listen to DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. I was moved to tears right as the last song was ending. I’m not fluent in Spanish, I did study it for seven years but even though the lack of practice makes me a little rusty, I understood it all. The intention and the meaning woven in the rhythm of each song, bouncing off from the drums and sliding down from the trumpet’s copper. It sounded like my childhood.
It sounds like the sundays of my childhood, the drums of the Kompa playing on the speakers on those mornings.
My dad is from Martinique, a Caribbean island that is part of France. One way my dad kept us connected to our history and culture was through music. The different musical genres that stemmed from the Caribbean were heard mostly Kompa (from Haïti) and Zouk (from Martinique).
Every family reunion, every Sunday, every car ride. The music, its rhythm, its history was never lost on me and now as an adult, not speaking Créole/Kreyol — a story for another time—this is how I maintain my connection to my culture.
Soon after, those songs were quickly followed by salsa. My dad would start blasting them too on Sundays when he and my mom started taking classes.
My parents started learning Cuban salsa when I was eight. Their teacher had arrived in France less than ten years before and once a month my parents would come back from their class and rehearse the moves they had learned in our dining room. Soon my brothers joined the lessons and here I was sitting in the corner of the dance room taking it all in. Calixto, their teacher, would teach them the steps and moves but also the history of his home, its language, sounds and sharing with us part of his life. Those classes weren’t just a way to learn to dance salsa but once a month we stepped foot in the Cuba he had grown up in.
All those influences became part of the background of my childhood, the sounds echoing in my mind when I revisit certain memories. My dad’s hyper fixation made an impression onto the entire family. Now at every gathering, everyone moving, dancing to kompa, zouk and salsa.
Every summer for the past three years, my family organizes barbecues. All the uncles, aunties and cousins show up in my parents’ backyard and we eat, laugh and dance the day and sometimes the night away. When I’m not trying to win at least one game of dominoes, I spend most of the day listening to the elders share the stories of when they were younger, growing up on the island. Stories of how much it has changed since then. How their aunt’s shop is no longer. How the statue of Virgin Mary that used to mark a crossroad is now enclosed in someone’s wall.
So yes, DTMF struck a chord with me. I’ve been thinking for weeks now about preserving my family’s history and our stories by printing more pictures, keeping them in albums, writing down the stories and our family tree. I think the moment this idea took roots in my mind was in July 2020. We had lunch at my grandma’s home. I don’t remember how we got there but she ended up taking all her photo albums and telling us who was who. People I had never met, that died long before I was born, started to feel like I knew them thanks to her memories. It made my connection to my grandmother even stronger. And I feel like honoring that bond by keeping them, her, us alive. Benito —feels weird to call him by his first name— shared in an interview; how the previous generations used to take pictures as a way to keep moments alive. Pictures were precious because you had to take them, have them printed, a lot of intention got into it. Now, we can take pictures with our phones, it’s easy, less expensive — although film is becoming more accessible it still remains really expensive—to have pictures and yet our intentions are different. I’m not going to make a general statement about my generation but I know, I take pictures as a way to say I was there, to share on social media. I don’t take enough pictures for me nor as a way to keep a moment alive. I’m trying to do that more now, I even bought a digital camera two years ago and bring it to every family function and take pictures of everyone. I’m becoming the annoying auntie at the function taking pictures of her nieces and nephews. But now I realize the importance and the role of the Keeper. By keeping the moments alive, it’s all of our collective memory that lives on.
Even the social and political themes of this album resonate, TURiSTA or LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAII, resonates to what is happening in a lot of islands suffocating under the weight of imperialism and colonialism wether its perpetrator is France, the US or any other country. The stories of people coming to our islands to take pictures and enjoy the sun but not attempting to know its culture. The reality of locals losing job opportunities because you have people coming from the continent that want a life away from the ‘monotony’ of the continent. Endless stories of hotels being built and their owner declaring the beach as theirs and refusing access to the beach to locals. Bad Bunny isn’t the only artist from the Caribbean or the diaspora to have spoken up about the injustices that Caribbean face in their daily lives, I’m thinking about Kalash, an artist from Martinique that has been showcasing our culture to the world while also supporting local efforts asking for better consideration from the government, fundings and access to water.
The struggles for consideration and better lives are felt and lived across the Caribbean sea, those stories are known, they are common and with this album every Caribbean person remembers to celebrate their resistance. CAFé CON RON encompasses this sentiment: ‘Sube tú pa’ la montaña/Hoy yo me quedo acá’. The symbol of the mountains in Caribbean history is very important, a place of survival, a place to hide, a place of freedom away from the sugar cane plantations. A place of resistance.
During slavery, enslaved people would flee the plantations and would find refuge in the mountains out of reach from the colonizers. Now Maroons, they would create a community together, raid other plantations and create a new life for themselves. The mountains have been homes of our freedom. They will keep us until it’s time to come down again.
If you haven’t yet, I urge you to listen to DTMF, to watch the short film and the slides sharing the history of Puerto Rico!